In the history of the northwest no name is regarded with greater honor
and prominence than that of William E. Cullen, who remained for a number of
years as a leading representative of mining law in this section of the
country. He was also well versed on railroad and other branches of
corporation law, his opinions coming to be regarded as authority upon
questions relative to those branches of jurisprudence. He rose to a position
of distinction because he wisely, faithfully and conscientiously utilized the
powers with which nature endowed him, and among those who have left their
impress upon the legal history of the northwest none have been more faultless
in honor, fearless in conduct or stainless in reputation. He resided in
Spokane for only a comparatively brief period but was a resident of this
section of the state for many years.
His birth occurred in Mansfield, Richland county, Ohio, June 30, 1838,
his parents being among the pioneer residents of that state. The ancestry is
traced back in the paternal line to Scotland, whence the great-grandfather of
Judge Cullen came to America, leaving the city of Edinburgh in 1768 to become
a resident of the new world. He was a man of fine intellectual attainments
and scholarly habits, was a Greek professor and in that connection was for
some time a member of the faculty of one of the early colleges of
Pennsylvania. He was the father of John Cullen and the grandfather of Thomas
W. Cullen, and the latter was the father of William E. Cullen of this review.
Thomas W. Cullen engaged in the manufacture of woolen goods in Pennsylvania
and was there married in 1837 to Miss Isabel Morrison. Thirty years later
they removed to Ohio, where their remaining days were passed, the father's
death occurring when he had reached the age of seventy-seven years, while the
mother passed away at the age of sixty. Their religious faith was that of the
Protestant Episcopal church and their lives were ever in harmony with their
professions.
William E. Cullen was reared amid the refining influences of a good
Christian home and was the eldest in a family of six children, to whom the
public schools of his native town afforded them their early educational
privileges. He afterward had the benefit of three years' study in what is now
known as Kenyon College, a celebrated Episcopal institution at Gambier, Ohio.
The west with its limitless opportunities attracted him, and following his
graduation he went to Minnesota, where he was appointed superintendent of
instruction for the Winnebago Indians, his uncle, Major Cullen, being the
Indian agent for the entire northwest. Two years were devoted to that work
but during that period he determined to enter upon the practice of law, hoping
to find in it a more congenial and profitable field. The trend of his mind
was naturally analytical, logical and inductive and he felt that there would
be sustained interest for him in the preparation and conduct of cases and in
the solution of intricate and involved legal problems.
In 1860 Mr. Cullen entered the office of Judge E. Flandreau, at that
time associate justice of the supreme court of Minnesota, and there continued
his studies under most effective direction until 1862, when he was admitted to
the bar. He shared in the experiences of lieutenant in a company of state
troops at the time of the Indian uprising of 1862, which reached its climax in
the fearful massacre at New Ulm. The company to which he was attached did
active duty in suppressing the Sioux Indians, and when his military aid was no
longer needed Mr. Cullen turned his attention to the active practice of law,
opening an office at St. Peter, Nicollet county, Minnesota, where he became
associated with Major S.A. Buell, a brother of General Don C. Buell. This
connection was maintained until 1866, when Mr. Cullen started on the overland
journey to Montana, traveling by ox team with a party that made the trip under
command of Captain James Fisk and arrived in Helena in August.
Mr. Cullen at once opened an office in that city and soon gained
recognition as a lawyer of wide knowledge and ability. His services were in
constant requisition in the trial of cases and in counsel and he also took
active part in shaping the early history of the district through political
activity. He was chosen to represent the district in the legislative
assembly, which at the time numbered but seven members and was the first to
convene subsequent to the annulment of the laws of 1866. At later dates and
on different occasions, when the country was more thickly settled, Mr. Cullen
again represented his district in the territorial and state legislatures and
was identified with the work of framing many of the laws which now have place
on the statute books of the state and constitute a firm foundation for its
present high legal and political status.
As the years passed Judge Cullen progressed in his profession until he
occupied a position of distinctive precedence and prominence. In 1876 he
became a partner of Colonel W.F. Sanders, one of the most distinguished
members of the bar of the state. Later he was associated with George F.
Shelton and afterward with Governor J.K. Toole, all distinguished
representatives of the legal fraternity in the northwest. He likewise served
as division counsel for the Northern Pacific Railroad Company from the time
its line entered the state of Montana in 1881 until it was reorganized in
1897. As its chief representative in Montana he passed through many exciting
periods in its history, from the time when General Grant drove the golden
spike at Gold Creek, Montana, through its many vicissitudes, including in its
later years the troublesome seizure of trains by the Coxey army and the great
sympathetic strike of 1894, which completely tied up its property, and finally
through its passage into the hands of receivers and its final sale to the
present reorganization.
Professional service, which also brought Judge Cullen into more than
local prominence, was his work as general counsel for F. Augustan Heinze
during the long legal contest which he waged with the Amalgamated Copper
Company for many years at Butte, Montana, resulting finally in victory for his
client. The judge was one of the organizers and a large stockholder of the
Powell Sanders wholesale grocery company of Spokane.
The political offices which Judge Cullen filled were always directly
or indirectly in the path of his profession, being connected with framing or
with the interpretation of the law. He was the first attorney general of the
state of Montana and also its first adjutant general. In politics he was a
recognized supporter of the democratic party but felt that his professional
duties should be precedent to all else and thus took comparatively little
active part in political work. A contemporary biographer has written of him:
"In his chosen field of mining law few men were his equals and he has left a
deep imprint upon the mining laws and decisions of the country. His ability
was recognized by the public and the profession and was the outcome of close
study, thorough preparation of his cases, keen analysis of facts and the
logical application of the law. Before a court or jury he entered easily and
naturally into an argument; there was no straining after effect, but a
precision and coolness in statement, an acuteness and strength in argument
which few possessed, marked him as of a mind trained in the severest school of
investigation and to which analytical reasoning was habitual. Such decisions
as Black vs. Elkhorn Mining Company and Lewis vs. Northern Pacific Railroad
Company, in the supreme court of the United States, were from their beginning
great legal battles and were fought by him on points which were then new in
the history of litigation then existing in this country. For a period of
twenty-one years he conducted for the Montana Mining Company, the owner of the
famous Drum Lummon mine at Marysville, Montana, the bitter litigation existing
between it and the St. Louis Mining Company of Montana, and in the end fell a
victim to his ardor in fighting the litigation. The last trial of this case,
in Helena, Montana, where he conducted it, lasted for a period of over three
months, in the year 1905, and he wore himself out during the course of this
trial, although on account of his rugged health the effests [effects] of
exhaustion did not disclose themselves for a long time to come and not until
he was before the supreme court of the United States, in arguing this case for
the Montana Mining Company in December, 1907, when he was stricken down by an
attack of heart disease from which he never recovered.
Judge Cullen spent the last few years of his life in Spokane, to which
city he removed with his family in 1899, and here entered into partnership
with F.M. Dudley, under the style of Cullen & Dudley, a connection that was
maintained until his life's labors were ended. He was always very devoted to
his family, and his was a happy home life which had its inception in his
marriage, in 1868, in Helena, to Miss Corlin V. Stoakes, who was a native of
New York, a descendant of the Lawrence family and a daughter of Clarence B.
Stoakes, for a long time a prominent attorney of New York city. Mr. and Mrs.
Cullen became the parents of five children, of whom three are yet residents of
Spokane. The mother of these children died on the 18th of January, 1911.
He considered no effort on his part too great if it would promote the
happiness and welfare of his wife and children and his was a nature that shed
around it much of the sunshine of life. His friends, and they were many,
found him a most congenial companion and one, too, with whom association meant
expansion and elevation. Death came to him in September, 1908, and thus
passed from the scene of earthly activities one who had long been prominent in
the northwest. Success and honors came to him in merited recognition of his
personal worth and ability. He was recognized as the peer of the ablest
members of the bar in this section of the country and his life was rich in all
the traits of honorable manhood and citizenship.